Something To Live For
by simonsaysfunction
Summary: Pinned by the Mother's disciple at the battle for the Keep, Aedan Cousland finds something to live for. M!Cousland/Anora. Spoilers for Awakening.


Title: Something To Live For  
>Author: YukiVampyra<br>Fandom: Dragon Age: Origins  
>Pairing: M!CouslandAnora  
>Rating: PG-13<br>Disclaimer: I don't own anything.  
>Summary: Pinned by the Mother's disciple at the battle for the Keep, Aedan Cousland finds something to live for.<br>A/N: Oh, lord, I've written het. Do forgive me if I'm a bit rusty at this, but the idea wouldn't go away. Anora might seem a bit OOC, but that's because we hardly got to see her as anything but a conniving, manipulative, power-hungry bitch.

The general had him pinned. It was disconcerting. No, it was gut-wrenchingly terrifying to watch the Mother's disciple stand over him, mockingly. Vigilance was in the snow just out of his grasp; his shield arm was broken, the Heartwood miraculously staying intact despite the splintering of bone behind it. Blood caked his armour, the black, oozing darkspawn ichor mixing with the bright red of his own vitae from the careless errors he had made in his arrogance. Peering up at the monstrous grin of the darkspawn above him through the visor of his helmet, Aedan's panic receded. He drew upon the closest memories to his heart to calm himself as he prepared for death.

He saw Anora. What he remembered of her at court, at any rate. The furtive glances while she thought he wasn't looking and the shy smile that stayed until she realised its presence, the hesitant touches borne from what seemed like genuine affection instead of the façade for the public. This bothered Aedan. Why was he not seeing, remembering Morrigan? He had once told Leliana he was in love. Perhaps it was a lust for the difference, the blunt arrogance so unlike the simpering nobility. Perhaps he had never truly loved her at all.

That worried him somewhat. What if he loved Anora? What if, even odder, Anora loved him in return? She had seemed genuinely worried, anxious, about him being away from court, away from her, hunting this Grey Warden-stealing darkspawn with only a few other Wardens to watch his back. If Anora had her way, he would be guarded by a contingent of knights, if not safely back at court. He saw clearly the snippet of conversation they had shared in front of the others.

"_I trust you are well, husband? No permanent damage?" Her façade was perfectly in place, though through practice, he could see the faint lines of worry etched in the corners of her eyes, the set of her mouth._

"_It'll take more than a few darkspawn to kill me." The arrogance was more to assuage her fear, than any real egotism._

"_I would be careful just how you tempt fate, my prince." The undercurrent of exhaustion had set him on edge, he had wanted, oddly, to draw her into his arms and assure her that he was alive still, that he would return to her in Denerim. _

He remembered the conversation they had shared, privately, away from her templars and the newest recruits. The private, gentle touch to the dragonscale armour he had still worn.

"_It troubles me to ask you to leave the court in order to deal with this. If I had any other choice…" That she would even express open remorse at doing something she felt was necessary for Ferelden's safety was new. It spoke of a bond he had not previously realised was there._

"_Don't worry about it, Anora. I'll be fine." More easy confidence simply for her benefit. He knew the odds as well as she. That he had survived killing the archdemon was a blessing in itself. Tempting fate by going after this new threat was borderline suicide._

"_And this is why you are a prince of Ferelden. It will be up to you to deal with the vestiges of the Blight before the situation grows out of control. No easy task, but I'm confident you are up to it. Now I shall leave you be. Good luck, Aedan." It was the first time she had said his name, even while alone. The pride and affection shining in her eyes…he nearly kissed her, but settled for a smile instead. Anything she did not initiate, especially in public, might send her back to her corner like a frightened animal._

Loghain's visit to the Keep on his way to Orlais flickered in and out, the part about Anora being horrified at the prospect of an heir being chief among what he actually could make out of the fuzzy recollection. His heart had sunk. It ached still despite the effort it even took for him to breathe. It felt like his breastplate was crushing his ribs and his exhaling came out a cough wet with blood and spittle.

The darkspawn seemed to find it amusing, pushing its foot against Aedan's side to move him, making a sputtered wheeze erupt from his abused throat. It was, however, just the momentum the prince-consort needed. He had remembered something to live for, even if she did not, possibly would not, ever realise it. His gauntleted fingers curled around the hilt of the longsword forged from the bones of an elder dragon, a chill immediately diffusing across his hand and forearm, the frost runes Wade had imbued it with flaring to life at his touch.

In one seemingly effortless move, Aedan lifted the sword from the snow and plunged it upwards through the beast's solar plexus, rupturing whatever internal organs it had. He gathered his weight behind it, shoving until the hilt was against the chainmail hauberk and the tip had lanced through its back. Black blood poured from the general's mouth as it released guttural groans of pain before it collapsed, sending Aedan back into the snow.

He gagged as the fetid flesh touched his helmet near the slit for his eyes, the liquid pouring in to momentarily blind him. Garevel raced to him as well as the dwarven brothers, Dworkin and Voldrik with Maverlies hot on their trail. They were, he assumed, terrified he was dead.

"Medic! We need a medic, now!" The captain's frantic shouts were heard, he hoped, over the din of retreating darkspawn, the explosions of Velanna and Anders' spells. The brothers lifted the corpse from Aedan, letting him breathe a bit easier despite the choking smell of the blood. His fingers released their grip on Vigilance, knowing he did not have the strength to rip it from the corpse.

"Is he…?" Maverlies trailed off, as if merely voicing her concern would make it so.

"N..not yet. Just a bit…broken." The Commander managed, grinning despite the metal that hid his face from their view.

"Thank the Maker."

"In the name of Andraste, where is the medic?"

It was eerily similar to find one's position reversed. It seemed like years ago that Aedan had been shouting along the same lines, someone to heal Varel who had stupidly stood in the path of an ogre's charge. He vowed not to meet the same fate. _Anora._

"Get him out of his armour, if you can. Try to be gentle, however, in the case of internal injuries." He heard the soothing, if clipped voice of the same medic who had pronounced Varel dead. He felt hands fumbling with the intricate buckles of the pauldrons and breastplate, the gauntlets and finally his helmet. He breathed in deeply and promptly went into convulsing coughs. The weight gone from his chest, he felt like he could breathe properly.

"Broken bones…I'll see what I c—"

"Get out of the way, shem." Velanna interrupted whatever the woman was saying and kneeled down next to her Commander, Anders on the other side. "We have more work to do, you bumbling oaf." The insults were akin to affection, when directed towards him or Nathaniel. "Anders and I will fix your bones. Be grateful that I find your survival necessary for ours."

The normal tingle of healing magic became an uncomfortable burning itch. He had never felt bones being knitted magically, and he knew that it was only because Velanna had Dalish magic, groomed to be a Keeper, and that she had the help of Anders that it was happening at all. Aedan attempted not to squirm too much, but the melting snow was seeping into his tunic.

"There. Now drink." A vial was put to his lips as soon as the aura left him and he drank whatever was in it, as well as the next vial provided him. He sighed in relief as he felt energy returning to his muscles as if he had never been broken and bleeding on the ground at all.

"Thank you, Velanna, Anders." He replied, trying to keep the mirth from his tone at her sullen look, tinged with pride and relief. She merely scoffed at him. As he stood up and donned his armour (after cleaning the vile ichor from his helmet, of course) and sheathed Vigilance in its place behind his shield, Garevel finally spoke, his voice full of breathless awe.

"We've…we've won. The price was dear, but the Vigil holds. Varel…Varel would be proud."

"I couldn't abandon my friends to die."

"I've news. We know where the darkspawn came from! Their retreat left a trail even the greenest of recruits could follow." Maverlies chimed in, tone thick with contempt for the mistakes of these creatures of nightmares.

"They will pay for what they've done to my lands and people." _Duncan. Cailan. Varel. Alistair. Millions dead or wounded, lives in fiery, blood soaked ruins._

"The army has taken heavy losses. Dead, wounded. It will be some time before they can mobilize again." Voldrik, the practical one, motioned around them. Bodies were everywhere, not all of them darkspawn. Several men were leaning on swords or pikes, against walls, eyes trained on their Commander of the Grey, their Arl, their Prince.

"The commander has the right of it. Every day you wait is another day of broodmothers spawning new evil." His brother was next, disdain for the creatures filling his every word.

"If the army can't do it, the Wardens will have to." _It must be finished._

"We've seen you in action, Commander. You and your companions are an army all on your own."

With a nod of thanks for Dworkin's support, Aedan looked to Velanna, Anders and Nathaniel. The last looked at him with a mix of emotions. He had set his family's land to burn, the city they had built up over generations. But they were comrades in arms, brothers in loss and pranks. They would overcome this hurdle.

"To the Dragonbone Wastes it is." The youngest Howe commented lightly, as if it were merely a walk in the park. And so the foursome left, followed by the tired cheers of their army.

_They fought through the pockets of Children trying to cannibalize the other darkspawn, killing everything that moved that was not one of them. To the surprise of everyone but Aedan, at the entrance to Drake's Fall, a High Dragon swooped down and landed directly on top of the darkspawn. With Nathaniel and the mages providing cover fire, Aedan got close enough to jump on her head and stab her through her eye, twisting and stabbing the blade until she let out a roar, her final death knell, and collapsed. Inside, inside was different. They faced a wholly different foe than that of the darkspawn, still lurking, of course, under the shadows of the Architect and the Mother. This foe, this foe was borne of Velanna. More specifically, of Velanna's sister who materialized out of the shadows._

_Aedan pleaded with her, on the stunned_ _elf's behalf, to come with them, to show the world her twisted view of these monsters. That, of course, was not his wording. Despite his mother's assessment of his tact when he was still a boy of twenty, as a man of twenty-two and the prince-consort of a country he had learned something about persuasion, especially after uniting said country under a single banner. The banner of the Grey Wardens, no less._

_They fought through the Tevinter towers and Aedan awakened their power, sure, despite Nathaniel's commentary that they could in fact be making everything all the more easy for the Mother to just eat them, that they would, in fact, help him kill her. Until they found the Architect and his corrupted Warden Utha. He immediately rejected the darkspawn's overtures of a partnership, ignoring Velanna's loud pleas for him to hear him out, that this was what her sister had been searching for, fighting for. Aedan could only see one thing in his mind while the Architect was spinning his tale. _Anora.

_Despite her outspoken desire to do anything but kill the Architect, Velanna did not hesitate to defend her comrades. She ripped into his mana supply, siphoning it, using it against him as Aedan dodged the small fizzles of flame he could conjure, and then smoothly cut off his head. This is all, of course, a glossing over of the gritty battle; the story is not in the killing, not in the victory that was surely to follow. No, the story is afterward._

_Of course, Aedan and his party simply marched through the small horde of Children defending their Mother, slaughtering the deformed and chilling creatures with mechanical efficiency. The others would comment later that the stony determination on their Commander's face was more frightening, perhaps, than the sight of the Mother in all her grisly glory._

_The prince-consort called down the fire of the Imperium, killing the swarm of children that overtook them and cauterizing the Mother's tentacles. Then Aedan simply drew Duncan's dagger from his belt and leapt at the monster, stabbing her, and when she opened her nightmarish jaws, he shoved it through, severing her spine. He sagged, the adrenaline seeping out of him to leave him weary once again. He mustered the energy to leave the nest with the others, looking over his shoulder to be sure that the Mother was, in fact, dead, never to plague the world with her creations again._

After they returned to the Keep, Aedan wanted to pack up and leave for Denerim as soon as possible. He wanted, needed to see his wife. However, nothing in his life could ever be as simple as up and leaving the arling he had offhandedly ruled for just over six months. So he delved into paperwork, into peasant and noble bickering and tensions with merchants, into shouting matches with Velanna over her sister and the death of the Architect. Everything seemed to be his fault.

It was fortuitous, of course, when he heard that Nathaniel Howe, his closest friend since Alistair, had saved his brother's life. He invited Fergus to the Keep and told him stories of his adventures. Fergus was at first nervous when Nathaniel introduced himself as Rendon's youngest son. But he had proved himself an ally in the fight for Amaranthine and the Keep, in saving the Teyrn's life. So Fergus gave a portion of the arling back to the Howes, which Nathaniel passed on to his sister, Delilah's, son.

Aedan felt the loss of Sigrun heavily, and he rather missed the ever vigilant presence of Justice despite how relieved he was that the smell of Kristoff's rotting corpse was gone. It took another six months of political battles with the nobles and peasantry alike to rebuild Amaranthine to even a third of its former glory, all money coming through the Keep that was not needed for immediate repairs funneled into the farms and the city.

After that? Aedan rode his warhorse into Denerim, greeted by crowds of adoring people to see their Hero and Prince return safely from yet another fight with the darkspawn. At the gates he was overjoyed to see Anora, who despite herself, could not help to greet him with a smile. He immediately dismounted in a flourish and swept her up in his arms, her public reticence and his bulky armour be damned. It was exactly what the crowd wanted to see. Love between their rulers. They cheered him on as he ran gauntleted fingers down the curve of her cheek and, to his surprise, she leaned into the touch.

"I missed you, my prince." She murmured, voice barely heard over the crowd.

"And I you, my queen." He had things to discuss with her, the invitation to Orzammar for one, the state of Amaranthine for another, and the circulating rumours of Morrigan being spotted in Ferelden once again, but they could wait. He had waited long enough.

"There will be a feast in your honour, you know. You have once again saved the land from darkspawn."

"I got lucky." He flashed a charming grin, even as she led him inside, leaving his horse to be stabled by waiting servants.

"Hmm. Luck, perhaps, skill and your hard head, definitely."

"Was that a joke? I think that general got me harder than I thought."

"I…what?" Her flabbergasted look amused him so much that he broke out into laughter.

"This is not funny. You were injured?"

"Of course I was, Anora. I was on the front lines when they attacked the Keep."

She looked like she might slap him. Her cheeks blazed and her eyes flashed a hard, glittering shade he knew meant rage.

"You stupid man. Did your pride not allow you to stay back and perhaps survive? What would I…what would Ferelden do without her prince, hm?" Her rantings did not hide the slip up. Aedan drew her into a niche, away from the lurking guards, and kissed her forehead.

"I did survive, and it wasn't pride. It was necessity. I don't trust anyone to keep you safe but your father and myself, and if that means jumping headlong into a darkspawn army, sword swinging, then so be it."

She sputtered for a moment, all eloquence and cold defiance gone, leaving Anora the woman, Anora his wife, behind. "I…you stupid man…"

"I love you, too."

She hit his breastplate and stalked back out into the hall. "Get out of that armour and bathe. You smell like a horse."

"I'm telling Brennidon you said that."

"Please do. The opinion of a horse matters ever so much to the Queen."

"So you say until he knocks you off his back…_again_."

"Do desist. It has nothing to do with that and you know it."

Their banter was getting easier and easier to slip into, it seemed. Anora was not the ice queen others thought, at least not to him and Loghain. And making his queen angry was far too much fun.

"Whatever you say, Your Majesty." Her infuriated huff sent him into a fit of immature giggles which he tried in vain to muffle with his hand.

"Insufferable."

"You forgot dashingly handsome and charming."

"Go away before I seriously injure you."

He bowed, still grinning like an idiot, before sauntering off to do as she had asked. A bath didn't sound half bad.


End file.
